In recent year’s social media, likely more than anything else has significantly impacted most of our daily lives. It is hard to know sometimes how our life has changed until we stop for a moment and look at how different it is from ten or even five years ago. Envisioning the global conversation that has developed over the past few years because of tools like Facebook and Twitter might have been unimaginable for most people at the beginning of this decade. But social media communication tools have profoundly changed our lives and how we interact with one another and the world around us. Even it has an impact on the way we started spending our free time, there is a big influence of technique on our daily life. With the fact that we are seeing a trend where more and more people are moving away from traditional media and it’s creating vital challenge for companies and making them to think twice before dumping the usual amount of cash into traditional media marketing and advertising.

Common sense would tell you to take your message where the majority of the people are gathering and paying attention, which just happens to be Web 2.0(Shift in consumer habits: From expert driven content to User driven content) social mediums. The data is growing every single day. The number of connection points to the DATA is becoming increasingly available. Realizing what information is available about the business relationships becomes more critical as dollar value increases. Every dollar and every minute spend on marketing tactics is for one purpose: Business Growth!  Let me share this interesting quote from Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO – “People relate to people, not companies”, Social media provides us an opportunity to humanize the brand and engage the companies with consumers at personal level, which can provide substantial results in long-term like decreased customer support costs, customer feedback management, good PR and marketing channel to engage with target market.  Social Media is for every company that genuinely wants to engage with their customers, it doesn’t matter whether you are fortune brand or Local restaurant. As Sandy Carter, Marketing Head at IBM quoted, “I think the primary difference here is not in big or small company. But the difference is in how close you are to your customers”. I personally find that it is very interesting and exciting “Net Space” to be in and also rewarding if used in the right manner.

I was mesmerized the day I saw one. Video games caught my fancy as a child and at least from that aspect, I am yet to grow up. Looks like I am not the only one! The average age for a Video Game player is now 35 (source: Wikipedia). These are people who belong to the “Controller Power” era who were playing the first Arcade, console and home computer games as children.

The first Video Game I ever saw and played, which I still remember to this day, was the Freeway on Atari. The first computer game I ever saw and played was Paratrooper. They were so much fun, no matter how blobby the graphics look and monotonic the sound effects sound now. Pacman infact still has cult following.

Video Games, these wonderful illusions provide an audio visual experience, tricking one into thinking they are inside a fantastical world, moving, jumping, racing and doing what all not when actually staring at a physically stationary screen. Fascinated with this thought, one of the first “gamey” things I tried to program in Pascal was a “walk through a tunnel” simulation, where you would walk through a tunnel and use the arrow keys to, accelerate, decelerate, turn left and right.

Games continue to evolve, rapidly, their hunger for hardware pushing growth in that segment as well. Let me try and take you through this evolution as I have witnessed.

Shooting Games…

I’ve been a big fan of shooting games, so I’ll start with this genre. Wolfenstien 3d, good old days those, the game would fit on a 3.5 inch floppy. This game was a trend setter and pretty much gave birth to first person shooting games. Shooting down Nazis and their rogue dogs, changing weapons, seeing the protagonist’s face change with his health was a lot of fun, a new experience. The PC was now being looked at as an entertainment machine as well.

The popularity of the first person shooters saw a lot of hugely popular titles like the Doom series, Duke Nukem series, Redneck Rampage, Blood and the revolutionary Quake Series. Quake hit it big time with its online game play over the internet.

On consoles the Halo series has created much more than a stir, contributing significantly to XBOX sales. Half Life added the sci-fi angle to first person shooters. Unreal is another extremely popular example.

Lara Croft, the protagonist of Tomb Raider came in and changed this genre by adding a new dimension to it. This was the beginning of Third Person Shooters. With the protagonist visible on the screen, albeit from behind or from over the shoulder, the protagonist suddenly started getting a lot more attention, literally. MDK became popular with it’s really intelligent enemies and the sniper mode. Max Payne with his story of vendetta being brought out in a comic book like story line, killing the bad guys is one of the most popular Third Person Shooting games.

And can I go ahead without mentioning Contra, the Nintendo console game when talking about shooting games? I still remember the button combination that allowed 30 lives.

Combat Games…

“Finish Him”. If you know that phrase, there’s a good chance you have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome setting in your wrists. Yes the fatalities did take a toll on those overworked nerves and tendons along with the Mortal Combat characters.

Street Fighter II was another immensely popular arcade combat game, where you had to perfect those hard to remember and time special moves. And then you had the Capcom Vs. Namco games as well.

Racing Games…

One of the most popular ones, this genre appeals to varied demographic groups.

The relatively easy learning curve attracts a lot of new/non gamers.

I fell in love with racing games on the computer when I played Test Drive eons ago.

I was thrilled with the concept of being able to upgrade my car with the race money I won. Bikes, cars, I could race them all. Pole Position was also a popular game.

With new versions, one could see increasing amounts of realism being thrown into the game. You could honk, switch on your lights, and operate your vipers to increase visibily if it were raining. The asphalt on the game road started looking truer with better textures being used. The trees you whizzed past also assumed a more life like form as compared to mere triangles that would barely catch the corner of your eye earlier.

One could tweak various parameters in the car to suit personal preferences or the track/weather requirements. One could tune the suspension to suit the track, change the tyres from slicks to treads to suit the weather conditions. The game could be made more challenging by switching from automatic to manual transmission, the features were increasing at a break-neck speed. The physics in these games kept getting better. The damage sustained by your vehicle now also started to impact you vehicle’s performance if you so wanted.

“I feel the need, the Need for Speed”, the iconic dialog from the blockbuster movie Top Gun possibly gave birth to the title of one of the most popular racing games ever, the Need for Speed series.

Some racing games like Carmageddon and Road rash started endorsing violence, hung around for a while and yes, gained popularity.

Adventure Games…

Breathtaking backgrounds, an interactive story with an element of mystery and solving a lot of puzzles, now we’re talking Adventure Games.

The Legend of Kyrandia, that’s the first name that comes to my mind in this genre. Of course there were adventure video games (starting with text based adventure games) before that, but this was the first one I ever played.

Leisure Suite Larry, ok, let me just skip this one.

Games like Space Quest, the Monkey Island series also became popular. Myst took this genre world by storm.

The number of people following such games is dwindling and this is attributed to the other genres gaining popularity because they are not as “slow”.

RPG s…

Now this is one genre that has everybody talking. And by everybody I mean millions of hard core gamers, people who take games very seriously spend a lot of money and time on them.

The origin of this genre dates back to the invention of games like Chainmail and Dungeons & Dragons. These games were played by a group of people sitting across a table, using dice and pen and paper (we’re talking pre compter era days here ), assuming the roles of characters of fantasy, leading armies to conquer kingdoms, set out on adventues, honing their skill points with each adventure, becoming stronger.

The popularity of these games gave way to computer RPGs (also referred to as CRPGs).

CRPG’s like The Final Fantasy series, Elder Scrolls, The Legends of Zelda and Baldur’s Gates are some of the most followed ones in this genre.

Strategy Games…

The two genres of RPGs and Strategy Games often overlap, the line between the two being very thin if not non-existant. Games like World of Warcraft, Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, Commandos, Command and Conquer, Sim City, Dune, Age of Empires, Starcraft could easily fit into either of the two genres, because of the combination of strong Role Play and Strategy. Turn Based and Simultaneous Strategy games are both popular.

Casual Games…

I have seen more than one serious gamer calling the term “Casual Games” an oxymoron with a lot many more unmentionable adjectives thrown in. Come to think of it, the term serious gamer is also an oxymoron! Anyway, hard core gamers scoff at this genre, hard core game programmers probably want to stay away from programming these, but does that take away anything from the humungous fan base that these games have managed to build? I am sure all your facebook friends can be categorized into two buckets,

1.) Who play (or have played) these games a lot. Yes I’m talking about your friends whose crops have withered, or the Russian job that has to be carried out

2.) Who totally detest these games

Love them or hate them, but you can’t ignore them. They have a user base spanning all demographics, from kids to grannies. These games have spawned a whole new parallel economy of virtual goods and the numbers, both monetary and in terms of user base are gigantic in proportion.

Where are we headed?

Better graphics? More intriguing game play? MMO FPS games?

I feel it is the controllers that are going through a phase of revolution right now and the trend will continue for quite a while. The Nintendo Wii with its moderate processing hardware and just about ok graphics became immensely popular with its accelerometer and gyroscope driven Wii mote. You feel you’re in the game.

I’m also sure everybody is looking forward to this holiday season with the Microsoft’s Project Natal aka Kinect. If the demos and blogs are anything to go by, you might never see a controller again. The camera which is smart enough to recognize 31 body parts, 6 different players, with gesture and facial expression recognition is being touted as the future.

So what next? Gaming Hardware that detects eyeball movement? Maybe a game that reads your mind and doesn’t require even a camera.

Game for a brain implant for a game?

What is bad thing in Game testing ? Choose to Panic! Have you experienced Scuba diving or snorkeling?! Scuba divers put themselves in a situation similar to what game testers might face – Limited resources [the equipment you bring with you], time constraints [Air supply], rules to follow (rate of decent/ascent) and other surprises (unexpected sea visitors). Sometimes we may even be asked to accomplish something which we never done before, such as achieve 100% automation of the installation tests, or write a tool to verify the foreign language text in the game. Maybe no one has ever done this before. If you are not ready for a variety of test assignments and don’t have the skills needed to perform them successfully, then you will stumble rather than star. Study, practice, and experience are ingredients for good preparation. During the course of the project, try to get to know more about the game code. Keep up with the industry so you are also aware of what the next generation of games and technologies will be like. Become an expert in the requirements and designs for the parts of the game you are responsible for testing.

Computer games take from one to three years to develop (depending on scale). Testing begins late in the development process, sometimes from halfway to 75% into development (it starts so late because, until then, there is little to nothing to play or test). Testers get new builds from the developers on a schedule (daily/weekly) and each version must be uniquely identified in order to map errors to versions.

Once the testers get a version, they begin playing the game. Testers must carefully note any errors they uncover. These may range from bugs to art glitches to logic errors and level bugs. Some bugs are easy to document but many are hard to describe and may take several paragraphs to describe so a developer can replicate or find the bug. On a large-scale game with numerous testers, a tester must first determine whether the bug has already been reported before they can log the bugs themselves. Once a bug has been reported as fixed, the tester has to go back and verify that the fix works – and occasionally return to verify that is has not reappeared.

Evaluation of game rules: Game rules adequately explain operation of all components of the game including features, free games etc. Consistency with game rules and pay tables

UI and Functional test: Games outcome and data are correctly shown when games are played. Intermediate and final game outcomes are displayed for a reasonable time.

Verification the Integration points: Game win determination aligns with game rules.

Reviewing gaming procedures: procedures will be reviewed by System management, player account management, tournaments and promotions.

Infrastructure and security review: Secure and reliable operation for example time synchronization and OS reliability and security

You can follow few tips

• Need to identify the algorithm from Source code to identify issues
• RNG seeding checked in source code.
• Need to verify the source code appropriate use of random numbers, error handling, no unused variable etc…
• Need to verify the RNG mapping to make sure the output of game symbols, cards & other outcomes
• Need to test validate and evaluate the game predefined rules and its consistency
• Need to Make sure the indecent or offensive content/material display
• Irrespective of Single/Multi player games we need to validate bandwidth and client software.
• Reports need to validated with data accuracy Different date and time format, larger win, total money played, total no. of games etc.
• Infrastructure plays a vital role need to verify the network architecture and device configuration, OS reliability & security. Need to verify the gaming procedures with change control mechanism, game management and player management.

Keep all these tips and regardless of background experience in game programming and testing, anyone can become a game tester successfully.

Isn’t this an interesting idea? Render games on the cloud and stream them, in real time, to the clients. Come to think of it, this is quite similar to what Sun was talking about many years ago – “Network is the computer”. I like this concept where you can stick any game on the internet and it renders straight to the console @ hand.

Here’s my take on this:

- Perfrect for networking and online games. Think about the architectural possibilities now that all the client side and server side information is on the server – the cloud. Of course the client side now becomes a video decoder.

- 5 Mbps for an HDTV output is asking for a little too much. It is not always possible for everyone to have this sort of a connection consistently. I know for sure that South Korea, Japan and Singapore can march ahead in this area, especially in the wireless devices space.

- We will slowly be able to move away from a GPU+CPU architecture to one that is purely CPU (hmm or may just be GPU) architecture. Aren’t we tending towards software renderers here? Ray tracing, although years away, should become a natural progression.

- A more consistent “Minimum Requirements” spec for playing games.

- We definitely need to consider the possibility that having a vector graphics processor will lower bandwidth requirements.

- Fatter bills for data transfer

I know for sure that this will not make consoles disappear but it will make PC gaming and mobile gaming obtain better market penetration. A few years ago Steam changed the way I played games. I hope a service like Gaikai or Onlive will also change the landscape.

The last game that I had worked on (Magnacarta 2) taught me some valuable lessons in development and management. Since then I’ve been thinking about what would be the next most important step in video game development. In my opinion it is better tools.

Better tools make people more efficient. That way they can concentrate on making a better quality game instead of fighting to meet the deadlines.  To make this work one needs to slowly chip away at the hurdles that slow the pace of development.

Programmers already have a wide array of tools at their disposal and the tools are getting better. Compilers are getting better so are machines and the processors. Profilers significantly improved over the generations for both consoles and for the PC. Multi threading however is an area that needs significant bump in the tools.  I also think that a different language that supports threading as a core paradigm is better fit than C++. Of course thread profilers and threading libraries (Boost, TBB from Intel) are of great help, especially when combined with some of the design patterns that play well with threading (ex: Producer consumer, command pattern).

Artists, who compose at least half the development team, definitely need better tools. We need tools that revolutionise the way art is generated. The areas where I see significant improvements in the tools are:

1)      Procedural content generation – Great if we want to reduce the time to generate the content, reduce the size of the game (think downloadable content). The 64K competition is definitely a trailblazer in this segment

2)      Gameplay logic – Wouldn’t it be better if the gameplay designer could just create his own gameplay in the game inside of trying to convince a programmer and the team? I am talking about Kismet (Unreal Engine 3)

3)      Lip sync – It is time that we don’t have lip flapping and see good lip syncing especially for non English languages

4)      Automation tools – Tools that will give the artists an early red flag when content they add to a level causes a drop in the frame rate or pushes the memory limits over the boundaries

It is important to understand that a majority of the tools, including the level editor and modeling software are useful for both programmers and artists. Improving these will definitely make things better for artists and for programmers.

I can dream of a day when character rigging happens procedurally but for the next five years, I hope to see and build a lot more of these tools. Tools for creating content have been improving ever since humans desired to create art. From the cave paintings and the crop circles all the way to today’s video games and movies, they show an improvement in the kind of content we create. It thus makes me believe that improving the tool chain opens up new avenues for creating art.